There's a measure of irony to George Will's high minded opposition to workers having the freedom to choose whether or not they want to join a union. Will is a syndicated columnist and as one, he enjoys a contract that mandates what he is compensated by the outlets that run his columns. Then again, that is neither here nor there since in George Will's "civilized" world you do as he says and not as he does.
In today's Washington Post column, Will finds that the decline in union membership to 12 percent of the workforce is due not to the fact that an average of 23,000 workers are fired each year for trying to form a union (31,000 in 2005) but to Will's notion that unions are not "persuasive enough." It's easy to figure out why it's so hard to get this fact once you look at where he's coming from. In George Will's world, persuasiveness is measured through well-placed glances and obscure references to long dead words belonging to the English vocabuary. Disagreement sparks raised eyebrows and perhaps a few curt remarks of the scandalous variety.
In the real, brutish world that Will writes so much yet knows so little about, real workers lose their real jobs where they lose their real income and eventually their real houses.
In fact, Will dismisses the thousands of workplace rights violations that happen each year with a short glance at the wording behind labor law. According to Will:
There are, however, ample protections against employer pressures that really are abusive.
I wonder what protections he must mean.
Maybe the ones that were supposed to protected Verna Taylor?
Three years later, in 1995, the NLRB ruled that Taylor had discriminatorily terminated the workers based on their union support, and ordered that the company offer to reinstate the six women, along with another pro-union worker fired, and to compensate them with backpay and interest.** However, the company appealed the ruling, and justice for the workers was delayed through multiple court filings, hearings and decisions for almost another 8 years. Finally, in March of 2003, the NLRB issued an order for the company to "make whole" the former employees with backpay and interest owed. But as of April 2004, over a year after the order was issued, the company still refuses to pay the almost $380,000 owed to the workers to redress the wrongful terminations.
Sure, the National Labor Relations Act says that workers cannot be coerced into one way or the other in a representational election. In fact, it says it below:
Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all such activities . . . .Section 7, National Labor Relations Act
But it happens anways thanks to sixty years of laws, regulations and conservative judges that have subverted the words quoted above.
And even worse, there is little to no penalty for employers who violate the Act. There are no fines, and no injunctive relief. They need only pay for the amount of time the worker was laid off if they are found to have violated that workers' rights.
And of course, the employer can choose to appeal the labor board's decision for years at a time - up to and beyond the point the affected workers lose their homes, cars, families and livelihood if they cannot find a new job.
By this time, the organizing campaign has ended, the affecxted workers' peers who voted in the election have long forgotten what got them to want a union in the first place and are instead fearing for their jobs - while the employer gets off scott-free with only a few extra legal bills to serve as a reminder of what took place. Instead of a system of penalties and fines the NLRB has provided them with a small cost of doing business.
Another point George Will makes is that:
The Employee Free Choice Act would short-circuit the process of persuading workers through a public debate between unions and employers, the winner of which would be determined by workers casting secret ballots
In a union election campaign, there is no debate. Employers have the right to hold captive audience meetings where workers are mandated to watch one sided anti-union propoganda films. Union organizers have no access to employees without asking for a list of them from management and even then are only limited to visting them at home when they can find them. Management, on the other hand, can and does send supervisors to visit with workers in Gestapo-stylke one on one meetings where the company cannot threaten to close or lay off workers but instead can give examples of how its done.
That's not a debate. That's a dictatorship at best and corporate terror at worst.
It probably would be a good idea for George Will to hang it up and stop talking about a subject, like Democracy, that he shows so little knowledge of.
Perhaps baseball or a Mr. Manners style book on civility would be more appropriate.
If you get the chance, send a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post regarding this column. Employer groups are mobilizing to defeat this bill and ensure it never comes up again. We need to stop tme from doing so.
A pro-Employee Free Choice Act columnwas also featured opposite Will's on the same page.